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Walking the Quarter

Note: This is completely off topic, but as we've been getting the magazine to press today, I don't have time to finish my thoughts on Ana's post. Stay tuned - but for a nice break from HPS, here's the rest of the blogs about my New Orleans trip. I wrote them, and then didn't get around to posting them!

After several long days at the show feeling a bit like a vulture as I hovered over the ALA convention staff, I made it a point to walk every part of the French Quarter. The Quarter hadn’t flooded during the storm and thus it was pretty much as it had always been.

The places most heavily trafficked by tourists were the same as always. The bars never seem to close on Bourbon Street, and the artists still display their work on Jackson Square. The sourvenior shops still push strings of beads, an endless variety of hot sauces but perhaps the T-shirts were a bit more creative than in years past. The selection of post-Katrina T-shirts was halarious, although perhaps not fit for print. FEMA workers aren’t feeling the love among the T-shirt vendors as the shirts sported FEMA slogans using some of the more colorful words of the English language. A mild one read: "FEMA – Stands for: Fix it My ASS!" Okay, so they weren’t great copy editors! The vendors even catered to the show selling shirts that read, "Librarians do it by the book."

I never had difficulty finding a place to eat on a modest budget. Some of the higher-end art gallaries and antique shops seemed to have limited hours, but the souviner shops were going strong at midnight. I wandered down a street full of antique shops on my last day there around 4:45 pm, thinking I might find them open – but only one or two weren’t closed for the day.

The other thing that struck me was that if you ventured away from the most heavily trafficked parts of the Quarter, it seemed a bit bare. While on the main drag the iron balconies were dripping with ferns, on the side streets owners hadn’t managed to deck out their porches with plants this season.

By the end of the week, however, Bourbon Street had been properly baptised by partying librarians. My last night in town I ventured down the neon gauntlet once again. This time there were discarded cups, and the smell was back!

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